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Humans have finally trashed the earth so badly that it can no longer sustain earth, so all of the people leave the planet in the hands of Wall-E robots; they are left behind to clean up the mess. After several centuries pass, it appears only one robot is still able to work to clean up the planet, and his only companion is a cockroach. One day a spaceship appears with Eve, a robot sent on a classified mission. Wall-E soon falls for Eve and embarks on a mission into space when he thinks heís about to lose her. That mission helps determine the fate of the earth and the human race.

IS IT A GOOD MOVIE?

Let me start off with the fact that Iím not the kind of girl that loves sappy, romantic stories, and Iím definitely not the type of girl who cries at aforementioned movies (no copy of THE NOTEBOOK in this apartment). While the none too subtle theme of this movie is of course about the environment and learning to find ways to work with it instead of fighting it in order to make it livable for future generations, the story at its core is an unbelievably pure, innocent and perfect love story. This is a movie that manages to portray some of the most vivid human emotions and feelings through animated robots that rarely use any form of dialogue. That alone makes this a damn good movie.

This is a Pixar movie, so of course the animation is ridiculously amazing, and in this movie, itís even more crucial to the story. The script is almost non-existent throughout the movie (Wall-E was built to clean, not socialize, after all) so the animators had their work cut out for them to make real characters and interactions.

The sound is one of the most impressive parts of this movie. Since the entire first half has no dialogue, every buzz, squeak and crash tells the story and moves it along. The pace of this film definitely starts off slower to help show just how long and drawn out his time on earth has been before Eve arrives, so the sounds are a huge part of giving his character some life. Once Eve arrives, the sounds each of them makes while interacting makes the story come to life.

THE EXTRAS

Disc 1:

Presto: Theatrical Short: In this short, a hungry bunny anxiously awaits the opportunity to eat a carrot that is kept just out of reach by the magician that uses him in his stage act. The bunny refuses to perform while he waits for his carrot, so the magician angrily tries to force him to until the two up the ante to outrageous degrees on stage. All in all, this is a funny and well done short.

Burn-E: New Short: This short is actually based on the movie. Wall-E and Eve distract a Burn-E robot from doing his job. The story is based on what happens to him while everything else is happening. Heís like the Charlie Brown of the Wall-E gang. Definitely funny and worth watching.

Animation Sound Design: Building Worlds from the Sound Up: This is an almost 20 minute feature about creating sounds to create the characters and the worlds. This is really cool, and the feature focuses not only on how amazing the sound is for WALL-E but how the techniques have evolved.

Deleted Scenes: With Director Commentary and without: There are two scenes that were completely finished before they decided to cut them, and while both are good, the story definitely flows better without them. The director commentary is great for understanding why the changes were made and why the revisions are so much better.

Audio Commentary by Director Andrew Stanton: Stanton gives a lot of insights into the choices made throughout the film and stories from the making of the movie. One of the cooler parts is when he talks about what he did to prove he could make the movie interesting without having dialogue.

There is also an ad, Sneak Peek: Wall-Eís Tour of the Universe.

Disc 2:

Behind the Scenes: This feature is made for Pixar/animation nerds (like my boyfriend). There are several scene choices and ways of looking at what went into making this movie; the behind the scenes people take you step by step through the process of making WALL-E. Iíll be honest; I was exhausted by how much work goes into a movie like this just from watching all of these segments.

Deleted Scenes with and without Director commentary: The scenes are very crudely animated, which is interesting for looking at what it eventually looks like. Itís also from an earlier version of the movie, so it looks very different than how the movie ends up. The second scene is especially interesting in watching the process of how humans had devolved.

The Pixar Story: The title says it all here; this is the story about how Pixar came about and how theyíve remained the most innovative company in the animation world. This is definitely a long special feature (about an hour and a half), but itís completely worth watching.

BnL Shorts: This is the collection of shorts from the Buy Ní Large company from the movie.

Wall-Eís Treasures and Trinkets: These are the Wall-E shorts that were released on the internet while they were working on the film. Theyíre all funny, and Wall-E is too cute to not watch as he dances, cleans and discovers new toys.

Bot Files: This is the whoís who of robots from the movie; it describes each robot, what they do and other little tidbits. Itís cute and funny, but not the most interesting of the special features.

ĒLots of BotsĒ Storybook: Read Along and Play along: This is a cute kids storybook and game function. Ok, so I think they just threw this on the DVD in order to say they had a game function. This is lame.

Disc 3 is a digital copy.

FINAL DIAGNOSIS

This is Pixar's best movie to date, and they've made a lot of great movies. This is a movie you'll definitely want to own; the only issue I have with the DVD is that the eco-friendly packaging, while trendy and congruent with the message of the film, is not exactly sturdy in keeping the discs in place. It feels kind of cheap.